The saying ‘prevention is better than cure’ is absolutely true for heart health. While today’s surgical interventions and medications make it possible for more people to survive heart problems, you don’t have to become ill before you pay attention to your heart health.
Heart disease prevention doesn’t have to be difficult or inconvenient, and is certainly far less inconvenient than a lifetime of medication or the major ordeal of recovering from heart surgery. In fact, all that’s needed for improving heart health is making simple changes to your daily habits.
The three major factors are:
- Diet
- Exercise
- Breathing
Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
Diet
This is the most important factor affecting our heart health. Exercise is essential too, but it’s not possible to out-train a bad diet. That’s why heart disease prevention starts with what you eat.
Sadly, there is so much confusion around the role of food for our health that many people believe they can eat whatever they want. So long as they “burn it off” in the gym, they can eat fried foods and donuts and still stay healthy. This simply isn’t true. We are, literally, what we eat. The flawed thinking of “burning it off” comes from a misguided idea that health is dictated by our weight, and if we stay slim and reasonably fit, we’re healthy. By extension, any illness that we suffer is therefore “unlucky” and out of our control.
The reality is very different. What we eat affects everything in our body, including our hormone levels, energy, and macro and micronutrients. It’s possible to be slim and athletically fit and yet still eat nutrient-dead foods. And without adequate intake of sodium, potassium, and other micronutrients, we can’t function at our best. Eating an excess of omega-6 in fast, cheap food encourages inflammation in the body, while consuming too much seed oil can wreak havoc on our hormones.
You can see how food ultimately governs the inner workings of our body. It also impacts many other parts of our life. For example:
- A poor diet can result in a lack of quality sleep.
- This further disrupts our hormones and encourages us to choose bad foods for an energy boost.
- The subsequent lethargy also discourages us from exercise.
So the first step for improving heart health is choosing whole, real foods and eliminating processed foods.
Exercise
You may not be able to out-train a bad diet, but exercise is still a fundamental part of heart disease prevention. Cardiovascular training is perhaps the most common type of exercise, as it strengthens the heart and improves your quality of life. You don’t have to become a marathon runner or test your physical limits each day — just work to incorporate more movement into your life.
My recommendation is high intensity interval training (HIIT), which raises your heart rate for short periods of time. Zone 2 training is also beneficial, which is moderate exercise for a longer period of time that raises your heart rate without pushing it to its max.
Strength training is also an important factor for heart disease prevention and good metabolic health. Focus on body weight and resistance exercises that can build and maintain muscle.
The great thing about exercise is it doesn’t require a lot of time, and it’s easily supplemented by just incorporating it into your daily routines. A brisk walk at lunchtime, a set of push-ups while you’re waiting for the coffee machine to finish, or even a 20-30 minute workout can improve cardiovascular health significantly.
Just remember that this exercise doesn’t mean you can reward yourself with a donut.
Breathing
Breathing is a lesser-discussed component in heart disease prevention. Stress is a major factor that contributes to heart disease, and deep, controlled breathing is an effective way to reduce stress levels and restore calm.
Studies show that controlled breathing can lower your blood pressure, control your heart rate, and bring high stress levels under control. This makes it an important consideration for heart disease prevention.
Controlled breathing is quick and easy, and requires no equipment. You can practice deep breathing on your commute, at your desk, before a meal, or even while walking. Incorporate it throughout your day, particularly when you’re feeling tense or stressed. Take a deep breath in through your nose, hold it for a few seconds, and slowly exhale through your mouth. You may feel calmer almost immediately.
Putting the steps all together
The three steps outlined in this article all go hand in hand. For example, feeling stressed can encourage us to choose comfort foods, which we begin to crave. The high sugar and caffeine can disrupt our sleep, so we turn to more sugar and caffeine to give us energy. This creates more stress, coupled with lethargy, so we avoid exercise to get more sleep.
If we reduce stress through deep breathing exercises, we’re more likely to make better food choices. Eating whole, real food then helps us perform better in the gym and build metabolically-active tissue over time. This, in turn, can encourage us to exercise more as we build the momentum of taking positive actions for our health.
You can see that improving your heart health doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Heart disease certainly doesn’t have to be inevitable, and making simple changes to your lifestyle can make a huge difference for your health.
Remember that making a healthy choice today can lead to compounding interest tomorrow. A single decision to avoid bagels in the break room can snowball into other habits (like going to the gym rather than watching TV). This ultimately leads to a happier, healthier future for yourself and those you love.
Are you interested in getting more ideas for improving your metabolic health? You can take my free metabolic health quiz to get a benchmark of where you’re at. Once you enter basic information about your current health and wellness, I can send you a customized plan of action so you can start making healthy changes today.